1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling display of an electronic device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for partially turning on/off display of the electronic device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an electronic device uses a display unit to deliver information such as a text, an image, or the like, to a user. When the electronic device needs to deliver the information to the user, the information is displayed by turning on a full screen of the display. When the electronic device does not need to deliver the information, the full screen is turned off. For example, the electronic device (e.g., a mobile phone, a Portable Multimedia Player (PMP), a navigator, an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), a Television (TV) set, a Personal Computer (PC), etc.) displays the information on the full screen when the user requests to display the information, and does not display any information on the full screen when the user does not request to display the information.
Meanwhile, the recent advancement of electrical and electronic industries results in an increase of users' expectations of the electronic device, and thus various service functions are researched and developed to satisfy such expectations. As one of the service functions, the electronic device provides a function related to a user interface to satisfy various users' desires. For example, such a function provided by the electronic device may be a function of controlling brightness of a display unit according to users' desires or a function of turning off the display unit when there is no user input during a specific time period.
The conventional service functions are not enough to satisfy various desires of individual users. For example, information displayed on a screen of the electronic device may be classified into interesting information and non-interesting information according to desires or situations of the individual users. However, such an aspect is not taken into consideration when the electronic device of the related art displays information by turning on/off a full display screen.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide methods for displaying only the interesting information without displaying the non-interesting information in the electronic device to facilitate user convenience.